The Long and Short about IKEA’s Quality & Their Instruction Manuals

As some of you might know, Miss Loi is currently busy with refurbishing The Temple for the new season.

With their “wide range of well designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that everyone can afford them“, Miss Loi has always been a compulsive raider of their outlets whenever something needs a facelift.

But with great prices, there has to be some compromises. To their credit, IKEA’s products have generally lasted pretty well in the past.

That’s why IKEA says,

Why do we abuse our own goods?

At IKEA we always put our furniture through rigorous testing, to make sure it can stand up to just about anything.

That’s why.

But these days, this ‘abuse’ may have gone a little too far.

Take this Allak chair for instance. When Miss Loi bought it more than a month ago (forgotten exact date), she was sure it didn’t come with this cool dragon design on its leather seat:

Upon closer inspection, she fully expects this ‘dragon’ to grow in size in the coming months.

Maybe it just had to do with the way Miss Loi sits, or maybe it couldn’t withstand the abuse from her butt. In any case, according to IKEA’s 100-day return policy, she’d need to “bring it back unassembled with the original packaging and your receipt … “.

Since she just remembered throwing that receipt and packaging away So in a great act of benevolence, she decided to let it pass.

But last weekend’s raid revealed more signs of the ‘abuse’ their poor products went through:

This was carefully pressed back for the photo.
A careless brush will easily tear the whole panel out!

Chipped glass

But then again, they’re not obvious enough for a lethargic Miss Loi to bring them back unassembled with the original packaging, so she’ll probably start a “Spot The Defects” contest for her new students at her refurbished Temple to spice up the lesson when they’re falling asleep.

Now let’s move on to their instruction manuals.

As we all know, part of their low prices comes from the savings in labour costs.

That’s why IKEA says,

Why do I have to assemble the furniture myself?

Even though it’s tricky sometimes, it means not paying someone in a factory to do it for you.

That’s why.

IKEA’s manuals have always been glowing epitomes of the old adage “A picture paints a thousand words“, relying almost entirely on diagrams alone to get the messages across. Miss Loi has long suspected that this may have also contributed to their low prices, in some way.

IKEA hieroglyphs circa 2007

More IKEA hieroglyphs

In fact, the only ‘words’ you’ll ever see in an IKEA manual are the page numbering and the word IKEA itself.

They must’ve researched this pretty thoroughly, and probably through some inter-quartile range deemed their iconic instructions clear enough to be understood by most humans, and that nobody will be left behind.

But in all research data, there’re always exceptions. And when an anomaly in the form of Miss Loi comes along and attempts to build something by following exactly what the manual says, this is what she gets:

Hopeless isn’t she?

After flipping through those sacred pages again, dead sure that she had followed the law to the letter, she finally nailed the step that killed her:

Oh if only IKEA had just added four more words like this to jolt her non-thinking mind:

Disaster would have been averted and there would be one less tarnish to The Temple’s grandeur for Miss Loi to brood over forever after. *sob sob*

But then again IKEA just don’t do text. THAT’S WHY!

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Miss Loi